All great things someday have to come to an end. In about seven and a half billion years, the sun will swallow the earth. The heat death of the universe is scheduled a very long time after that. And Caruana-Nepomniachtchi, after all the pressure on both players to win, arrived at this drawn queen ending on move 79:
White’s up a pawn, but one of the great things about chess is that, thanks in large part to the stalemate rule, being up a pawn is not always enough to win an endgame. That’s what lets us play gambits and sacrifice pawns for murky attacks and bail out into pawn down endgames from desperate middlegames. If I were playing white, I’d struggle on here for a while trying to win; if I were playing black I’d be pretty sure that the game was drawn but still a little stressed about it. Fabi and Nepo are real pros, they knew there was nothing left here but to watch the final protons decay into nothingness.
Normally here I’d say let’s dig into the final thirty(!) moves, but there’s almost no chess content left. Black has to play a lot of subpar moves in a row to even get close to losing. So instead of going through the rest of the game in microscopic detail, here’s a link to the entire game and some brief thoughts about Nepo’s defensive technique:
In this position Nepo played 87… Qf6. Great move. It threatens mate on a1, so white has no time for something annoying like 88 a5. But let’s imagine that black plays a little less precisely, say 87… Qc6, and allows 88 a5. I’d be in full freakout mode here with black: 88… Qc1+?! 89 Ka4 Qa1+ 90 Kb5 does not look promising (although still technically drawn, according to the tablebase), and 88… Kb7? 89 Qxb6+ Qxb6 90 axb6 Kxb6 91 Kb4 is the simplest of wins. But never fear, black can just play 88… Ka8! 89 Qxb6 Qa4+! and eventually force white to take his queen. 89 axb6 Qxb6! is a similar stalemate idea. It’s a trick that’s worth remembering, and further evidence of how unlikely it is that white can win.
A final position, ten moves later:
I want to highlight Nepo’s technique, which is very simple. He’s not looking for perpetual checks: he simply wants to maintain this defensive setup, with the queen defending the b6 pawn and the white king restricted. When Caruana tries to activate his king, the following occurs: 98 Kc3 Qe5+ 99 Kd3 Qd6+ 100 Kc4 Qc6+ 101 Kb3 Qd6. When Fabi reroutes his queen, something similar happens: 102 Qf3 Qd4 103 Qe2 Qd5+ 104 Ka3 Qd6. It’s all over but the five stages of grief.
Some final thoughts about this game, which has occupied the chess part of my brain pretty much nonstop since it was played two weeks ago:
My initial reaction was one of complete amazement at Nepo’s defensive ability. To take a position that was so incredibly bad around move 30 and continue to pose difficult problems was truly amazing. Taking advantage of 39… Rxg5! and laying a high-level trap with 58… Qe6! were two highlights for me, and inspired me to work harder not only in bad positions but in positions that I would normally give up as lost.
As I worked through these annotations, I also became more and more impressed by how well Caruana played. He conducted the middlegame through move 33-34 impeccably. After making things much more difficult and then throwing away the win, he responded by playing just about perfectly for another dozen moves (45-58) in a very challenging position. To throw it away a second and then a third time is both tragic and relatable: who among us hasn’t blundered away a sure win thanks to some combination of time-trouble, exhaustion, nerves, or bad luck? The context and the quality of the game compound the tragedy; had Fabi won this he would have been the favorite against Gukesh in the tiebreaks, and the narrative of the tournament would have been his amazing comeback (three consecutive wins to catch Gukesh, and 4.5 of his last 5), with a final victory in fine style over the two-time previous challenger.
I’ve got all five of Kasparov’s My Great Predecessors books, and when watching tournaments I like to imagine which games he would select for a My Great Successors series. This one would make the cut without question; to steal from my friend Dana Mackenzie, it’s the sort of nervy game that you have to find a way to win if you want to be world champion, similar to Ding Liren’s win in game 12 of his match against Nepomniachtchi last year or Carlsen’s win against Karjakin in game 10 of their 2016 match.
For my next chess post I’ll be turning to Gukesh, whose stunning performance shouldn’t be overshadowed by the drama of the final round. Please vote in the poll below for which of his wins you’d like me to look at.